Bringing business event services to life: A case of the Estonian Company Registration Portal

Countries

Policy areas

Tags: Business event services; Startina company; VAT number; Registering employees

Organisation name Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications

Contact person: Helena Korge

helena.korge@mkm.ee

There is much room for improvement in business service provision. Today, the most used business services are dispersed between different state agencies that require separate logging in. Apart from the government information website Eesti.ee, Estonia lacks a unified business portal, so business owners have reporting obligations in front of multiple state agencies. Entrepreneurs themselves have for years talked about the need for unified databases and registers for administrative burden to become lower (Praxis Centre for Policy Studies, 2012). In addition, there is no unified design or logic to using state services since each agency and web environment has followed its own reasoning, resulting in complex services landscape.

The needs of entrepreneurs have been analysed thoroughly throughout the years. In 2015 the Estonian Ministry of Justice gathered a steering group of entrepreneurs and organisations to identify areas that are hampering entrepreneurship. For reference, in Estonia the Company Registration Portal and Business Registry are under the Ministry of Justice.  The steering group produced a report on improving the competitiveness of the business environment, which stated among other things that the CRP as a single point of contact must be constantly improved and modernized and that the portal should provide much more assistance to organizing accounting and submission of declarations and reports (Ministry of Justice, 2015). The report also suggested to consider merging other government owned enterprises to the portal. According to a study which analysed entrepreneursÕ satisfaction rate with public business services in 2014, business owners are rather satisfied with public services in this field, with the satisfaction rate being between 60-70% regarding different aspects (Turu-uuringute AS, 2015). The same study also showed that the e-Business Register and CRP were both valued the most in this field by entrepreneurs. Therefore, it is only natural to start improving the CRP by adding other services to it.

Praxis Centre for Policy Studies. 2012. Development Trends of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. [online] Tallinn, Estonia: Praxis Centre for Policy Studies, p.70. Available at: http://www.praxis.ee/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2012-Vaikeste-ja-keskmiste-ettevotetearengusuundumused.pdf   

Ministry of Justice. 2015. Konkurentsiv›ime 2.0: Raport Eesti Šrikeskkonna konkurentsiv›ime kasvatamiseks tehtud ettepanekutes.[online] Tallinn, Estonia: Ministry of Justice. Available at: 96 https://www.just.ee/sites/www.just.ee/files/konkurentsivoimelisema_arikeskkonna_raport.pdf

Turu-uuringute AS. 2015. Ettev›tjate rahulolu riigi poolt pakutavate avalike e-teenustega. [online] Tallinn: Turu-uuringute AS. Available at: https://mkm.ee/sites/default/files/aruanne2_2015.pdf

Creating such cross-agency services is one of key agendas of the current Government CIO of Estonia, also titled as Deputy Secretary General for IT and Telecom, Siim Sikkut. As well as it is mentioned in the Digital Agenda 2020 of Estonia Ð a strategic document that describes the objective plans and actions to facilitate the use of ICT in Estonia in multiple areas - as the main goal in the area of service provision in the upcoming years. Therefore, it is just the beginning for such initiatives and Estonia plans on moving forward with creating more automated and proactive life and business events.

As a next step, the plan is to create such possibility also for existent companies, not just the new ones, as the obligation might occur when companies grow a certain size. And as mentioned earlier, the plan is to move all business related services to CRP. 

The project does not require ongoing extra resources from the public officials involved.

Both the private and public sector are all looking for ways to automate things and make them simpler for clients. This example represents a trend in public service provision, which lead to a more user centric, easy to use government services, which should act as a learning point for others.

Since no other country has created life and business events that are not just information services but provide actual services that function automatically or proactively, other countries will have a great learning material in the face of such successful projects. Regarding this project, other government agencies can see that better cooperation is needed to provide clients with great services.

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